The Digital CAVE is a (Integrable Systems Laboratory)
LSI’s Virtual Reality Nucleus’s infrastructure,
tied to the USP’s Polytechnical School. Developed by
LSI-EPUSP’s researchers, this system is known at United
States as Cave (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment) and at
Europe as Cube.

The CAVE started to be constructed in 2000, with (Projects
and Study Financier) FINESP’s financing, and it was
inaugurated in April of 2001. Much beyond 3D immersive projections
allowed by 5 screens of 3x3meters that form it, the Digital
CAVE also may receive interfaces that stimulate audition and
tactile sense, like stereo sound boxes and force feedback
devices; that’s why it’s a virtual reality system
that allows a high evolvement from the user.

It can look like a 3d cinema, like those at the amusement
parks; but Digital CAVE represents very much to Brazilian’s
high technology research and development. Such device, the
only one at Latin America, has been used to develop a bigger
man-computer interaction that soon will be available to all
the Brazilians. The platform of academic activities of education
and research that turns around the Digital CAVE is interdisciplinary,
as the new technological trends demand.

The Brazilian aeronautic, automotive, oil and gas industries
already started to take benefits from this technology. That’s
because the costs with the digital production are cheaper,
compared to the real archetypes and has the versatility of
getting alterations in any phase of the project.

Beyond many virtual mockups that involve the work of modelers,
designers and programmers, the Digital CAVE also sheltered
installations from Brazilian artists.

To generate all these virtual worlds, 24 computers, the called
clusters, work together, producing a performance equivalent
to the graphical super machines used at the Caves at great
centers of research of the world, but with very inferior costs.
The development of this technology is the result of years
of research of the LSI’s researchers team, and it is
already available to the Brazilian industrial market, bringing
the country for the international vanguard of the area.